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Thus, since knowledge and power acquire a single identity in
Bacon's perception, he does not see that the commandment - that
knowledge be exclusively directed towards gaining power - imputes
a new value to knowledge. And so he confidently asserts that he
is advocating a knowledge free of all 'idols of the
understanding' - a value-free knowledge, in more modern
terminology. Yet, this assertion of the identity of knowledge and
power is quite obviously a new idol. We do not see the change
envisaged by Bacon as a split between facts and values, opening
the way to value-free factual knowledge. We only see the older
values of 'good' and 'evil' being replaced by the new values of
'useful' and 'useless'.

Using Bacon's own categorization of the idols that beset human
understanding, we are tempted to call this new idol of
power/utility an idol of Bacon's Den; seeing that it had taken
hold of him rather early in life.17 But this idol of
his den was also fast becoming the idol of the western world.
Bacon was formulating his thesis of the identity of knowledge and
power and of the freedom of knowledge from all ethics, when
Christian monasteries - the custodians of the prevalent ethics -
had already lost out to the new temporal powers. It was also a
time when, as Farrington says, Christian ideas of mercy and love
had to take a back seat in the face of the lucrative
possibilities of plunder and slave-trade made possible by 'little
vessels, like the celestial bodies', that sailed around the whole
world, and by the power of gunpowder. And 'all the wealth, from
whatever source it came - distribution of monastic lands, plunder
of the treasure ships of Spain, or the new and lucrative trade in
black slaves - was being invested in industry' to further
increase the hold of the temporal power.18 It was only
a matter of time before the intellect would align itself with
these new powers, before new idols of the tribe and the theatre
emerged. It is no exaggeration to say, as Will Durant does, that
'the real nurse of Bacon's greatness was Elizabethan England....19

Although Bacon only gave expression to an idea which was
already in the air, an idea whose time had come, the formulation
was his own. He offered a justification for the drive for power
by declaring that truth is power; and he sanctioned all the
misery being inflicted upon whole continents - Africa and the
Americas - by declaring that the truth which was power had no
business to bother itself about what was good and what was evil.

Going further, he sought to cement the union of knowledge and
temporal power by asserting that knowledge in the pursuit of
power ought to be organized by the King. All his books are
addressed to the King. But in the second book of The
Advancement of Learning we find him making specific
recommendations to King James I to organize knowledge for the
sake of power. The opening words of this appeal to the King are
interesting, particularly in the context of Bacon's concept of
knowledge as a handmaiden of power:

It is befitting, excellent King, that those who are
blessed with a numerous offspring, and who have a pledge in
their descendants that their name will be carried down to
posterity, should be keenly alive to the welfare of future
times, in which their children are to perpetuate their power
and empire. Queen Elizabeth, with respect to her celibacy,
was rather a sojourner than an inhabitant of the present
world, yet she was an ornament to her age and prosperous in
many of her undertakings. But to your Majesty, whom God has
blessed with much royal issue, worthy to immortalize your
name, it particularly appertains to extend your cares beyond
the present age, which is already illuminated with your
wisdom, and extend your thoughts to those works which will
interest remotest posterity.20

Bacon then gives a blueprint of an organization of knowledge
which sounds like a description of a modern educational system.
He advises the establishment of schools and universities; of
endowments, privileges and charters; of libraries,
professorships, etc. He recommends improvement in the salaries of
lecturers and professors. He advises establishing contact between
European universities. And he advises generous grants for
laboratories: 'And if Alexander placed so large a treasure at
Aristotle's command, for the support of hunters, fowlers,
fishers, and the like, in much more need do they stand of this
beneficence who unfold the labyrinths of nature.' And 'therefore
as the secretaries and spies of princes and states bring in bills
for intelligence, so you must allow the spies and intelligences
of nature to bring in their bills, or else you will be ignorant
of many things worthy to be known.'

Bacon's advice to the temporal powers to take knowledge under
their wings was heeded. The Royal Society was founded in 1662,
and its founders named Bacon as their model and inspiration. Soon
knowledge began to be organized all over Europe on the Baconian
model. The separation of knowledge from ethics and its
custodians, the monasteries, was thus complemented by the
marriage of knowledge with power and its nascent repository, the
secular state.

In sum, then, the new ideal that makes Bacon the prophet of
the scientific revolution was that knowledge ought to be
organized under the tutelage of the temporal authority for the
exclusive purpose of gaining power without regard to the
questions of good and evil.

To complete the picture, however, we must also answer the
question: power for whom and over what? Theoretically Bacon's
answer to this question is that knowledge is power over nature
for the benefit of mankind. Thus in a much quoted passage of Novum
Organum Bacon states:

It will, perhaps, be as well to distinguish three species
and degrees of ambition. First, that of men who are anxious
to enlarge their own power in their country, which is vulgar
and degenerate kind; next, that of men who strive to enlarge
the power and empire of their country over mankind, which is
more dignified but not less covetous; but if one were to
endeavour to renew and enlarge the power and empire of
mankind in general over the universe such ambition (if it may
be so termed) is both sound and more noble than the other
two. (I. 129)

It is this 'universal' aspect of Bacon's ethics that has made
him the prophet of almost all mankind since the scientific
revolution. It is this aspect which prompted Rammohun Roy to
advocate Baconian ethics for his people, even when the latter
were being immiserized by Bacon's compatriots armed with power
acquired through the Baconian sciences. The statement that power
should be exercised over nature for the benefit of all mankind -
this crucial assumption, which alone can make Baconian ethics a
universal ethics as distinct from the ethics of a plundering
nation - this statement was not supported either by the general
tenor of Baconian philosophy or by Bacon's own life. Let us take
these two aspects separately and see how far we can find support
for them in Bacon.

First, the statement that Baconian science is a search for
power over nature, not over man: it is true that in Baconian
philosophy the major attack is aimed at nature. In Bacon's
writings, nature appears almost as an enemy, to be dissected and
tortured to make it yield its secrets. 'For as a man's temper is
never well-known until he is crossed; in like manner the turns
and changes of nature cannot appear so fully, when she is left at
her liberty, as in the trials and tortures of art.'21
And this is the source of that much-vaunted Baconian stress on
unbridled experimentation.

Such explicit formulations as these support the view that the
Baconian search for power is directed against nature. However, it
is interesting to note that Bacon's 'nature' includes man - not
only his body but also a large part of his soul. Thus, while
talking about the human soul in Book IV, ch. III of The Advancement
of Learning, he divides the doctrine of the human soul into
two parts: the doctrine of the inspired substance (proceeding
from the breath of God), and the doctrine of the produced or the
sensitive soul. He then generously grants, though still with some
reservations, that the former may be turned over to religion,
leaving it beyond the range of experiments for subjugation. The
other part, however, must be fully subjected to human
intervention. It may, like the rest of nature, be coaxed, vexed,
and tortured to extract its secrets. This part of the soul and
its substance may be justly enquired into.

What does this part of the soul contain? 'The faculties of the
soul are known, viz. the understanding, reason, imagination,
memory, appetite, will, and all those wherewith ethics and logic
are concerned. In the doctrine of the soul the origin of these
faculties must be physically treated.' One wonders what Bacon has
left so magnanimously for religion!

For all practical purposes, man for Bacon, we can see, is a
part of nature over whom power must be acquired through
knowledge. Novum Organum clearly states that most of the
mental and social faculties come into the realm of the Baconian
method.

Again, some may raise this question rather than objection,
whether we talk of perfecting natural philosophy alone according
to our method or the other sciences also, such as logic, ethics,
politics. We certainly intend to comprehend them all.... For we
form a history and tables of invention for anger, fear, shame,
and the like, and also for examples in the civil life, and the
mental operations of memory, composition, division, judgement,
and the rest, as well as for heat and cold, light, vegetation and
the like.... (I. 127)

Thus, the search for knowledge as power is extended to all
aspects of human life. In The Advancement of Learning (Book
VIII, ch. I1) Bacon gives a long prescription for the 'art of
rising in life'. He tells us how one could acquire power over
others by 'knowing' them: 'Men may be known six different ways,
viz., (1) by their countenances; (2) their words; (3) their
actions; (4) their tempera; (5) their ends; (6) by their relation
of others.' In the chapter on 'The Military Statesman, Or a
Specimen of the Doctrine of Enlarging the Boundaries of Empire',
we find him exhorting the state to war: 'No state [may] expect
any greatness of empire, unless it be immediately ready to seize
any just occasion for war.' The conclusion is clear: Bacon's
nature includes man; and when he talks of knowledge as power over
nature, power over man and other nations is also implied.

The second assertion, that power is for the benefit of mankind
in general, seems as nominal as the first. In Bacon's scheme of
things the world is to be ruled by a small Úlite which has power
and knowledge, and which is in the service of temporal powers,
preferably the king. The common man has no place in this
dispensation except as a hewer of wood and drawer of water. This
was the existing social structure in Bacon's society, and the
structure he envisaged for the scientific utopia sketched in the New
Atlantis: A King, a scientific Úlite in the service of King
and the people.22 It is not obvious how the benefits
of power acquired by this Úlite over man and nature would
benefit mankind. In practice, in Bacon's time, as now, the
benefits always went to the Úlite at the cost of mankind. Bacon
never thought there was anything wrong in this dispensation. On
the contrary.

Again, let anyone but consider the immense difference
between men's lives in the most polished countries of Europe,
and in any wild and barbarous region of the new Indies, he
will think it so great, that man may be said to be a god unto
man, not only on account of mutual aid and benefits, but from
their comparative states - the results of arts, and not of
the soil or climate. (I. 129)

The arts, in his time at least, were of course the 'true' arts
of gaining power over man and nature, mostly over the former. Two
of the three discoveries he chooses for reference in the aphorism
(I. 129) where he declares that power over nature is better than
that over man, are gunpowder and the compass - the two objects
which served no conceivable purpose of gaining power over nature
in his time, but indeed vastly increased man's power over man.
Bacon anticipated this objection against his ethics:

Lastly, let none be alarmed at the objection of the arts
and sciences becoming depraved to malevolent and luxurious
purposes and the like, for the same can be said of every
worldly good, talent, courage, strength, beauty, riches,
right itself, and the rest. Only let mankind regain their
rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift of God, and
obtain that power, whose exercise will be governed by right
reason and true religion. (I. 129)

It is curious that Bacon should at this point refer to 'right
reason' and 'true religion' while he himself tried so hard to
hound out all religions (except the study of the inspired
substance, which is to have no social or psychological reality)
and almost all reasons except the reason of power.

In fact, it seems that the idea of Baconian science generating
benefits for all mankind is a misreading of the idiom of his
time. For Bacon, mankind meant the gentry of Britain and
aristocratic groups in other societies. This was the accepted
usage of the term mankind in his time. The Oxford Dictionary in
its earlier editions defined gentlemen as those who were entitled
to have a coat of arms, and, according to one contemporary
source, there were 12,000 gentlemen in the England of 1696.23 It
is for these gentlemen that the Baconian discoveries were
intended.

To summarize, the new ethics called for an unbridled search
for power over man and nature and equated truth with power; they
promoted infinite intervention in nature (and man as part of
nature) in the search for truth that is power; they envisaged
that a small group of Úlite scientists would acquire this power
in collaboration with the ruling Úlite. And mankind at large was
offered a vague hope that at some point in the future they would
share the benefits of this power.

III

We have seen that the Baconian conception of the new
knowledge, which was to develop into modern science, had two
aspects. Firstly, it was to be the study of nature, and of man as
a component of nature, so as to reduce both to controllable and
'usable' entities. Secondly, this knowledge of control was to be
regarded not merely as a human acquisition but as the absolute
truth about nature and man, in fact as a transcript of the mind
of the creator of the universe. Bacon in his Advancement of
Learning laid down detailed plans for the orientation of
learning towards knowledge that would be sheer power. And in his Novum
Organum he constructed an epistemology to indicate how this
knowledge could be seen as a peep into the divine mind.

The conceptions that the whole world is potentially 'usable',
that the divine mind can be deciphered to find ways to put the
world to use, and that human knowledge at any given stage can be
regarded as the uniquely true representation of reality are
perhaps not originally Bacon's or even of his times. It would be
interesting to trace their origins and record the varied
practical forms taken by these Baconian core concepts in ancient
and medieval Europe. Our present interest, however, is limited to
core ideas of modern science within which the Baconian concepts
still seem to reign supreme.

For the notion that the proper objective of science is the
study of everything in the universe as a potentially usable
object has not been seriously challenged. Occasionally one may
come across an expression of anguish at the thought of a world in
which nothing exists that cannot be put to some use, and from
where human subjectivity is banished. Martin Heidegger, for
example, in A Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays,
offers a moving insight into this anguish and fear. However,
for him, too, the Baconian-scientific worldview is something that
need not be challenged or opposed. As far as he is concerned,
this is the mode of expression of being that happens to be
supreme at this juncture. Nothing can be done about it, except
achieving awareness of the dangers inherent in the situation.
That seems to be the position of most people, including modern
ecologists who harbour anxieties about the objectifying nature of
the Baconian worldview. Bacon's epistemological axioms are thus
accorded an ontological status, implicitly denying the
authenticity of the varied modes in which the Being happened to
reveal itself in non-western societies.

The other feature of science that Bacon stresses, that of
science being a true and, hence, uniquely valid representation of
reality, has also remained largely unchallenged. It is true that
Bacon's own attempt at constructing an epistemology that would
make science the unique truth about the world was not very
successful Alternative conceptions of what is, and what ought to
be, the appropriate epistemology for science were put forward
almost immediately, Descartes being the obvious example. However,
whatever be the epistemological theories put forward by various
people at various times, scholarship on science seems intent upon
establishing the validity of the Baconian concept of science as
the uniquely true representation of reality. To see its
stranglehold, one has merely to move away from conventional
scholarship (which is anyway known to be heavily infected with
positivist ideas) and look at modern scholars who have supposedly
given up positivist claims in favour of a 'liberal' view of
science. In spite of the liberal cloak, it is easy to discern in
them the Baconian urge to prove that modern science is the
uniquely true, uniquely valid system of apprehending the real
world.

In this context it is instructive to first look at the work of
Thomas Kuhn. In his book, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, Kuhn sketches a picture of modern science that
shows it to be an activity far removed from the Baconian ideal of
a mechanical process of systematic, objective accretion of
knowledge free of all 'idols'. The history of Baconian sciences
shows that normal scientific activity in any particular
discipline consists in the application and articulation of an
already accepted set of concepts, categories, theories, exemplary
problem solutions, experimental procedures, etc. This shared
complex Kuhn calls a paradigm. The routine process of application
and articulation of paradigms is, according to Kuhn, punctuated
by a crisis situation, wherein a paradigm current in a field is
found to be deficient for various reasons, and an intense
readjustment of concepts and categories, etc. takes place within
the concerned scientific community, leading to the establishment
of a new paradigm.

The process of normal science, that of articulation and
application of the paradigm, is more or less mechanical. But
despite being mechanical in nature, this process has nothing to
do with the objective, value-free apprehension of reality that
Bacon advocated. On the contrary, nature is approached in terms
of categories and concepts supplied by the paradigm, and the data
are worked upon through the ideal problem solutions and
experimental procedures offered by the paradigm. In fact,
according to Kuhn, the paradigms so deeply condition the
scientist's perceptions during his normal activity that it can be
said that not only normal science, but the scientists' world
itself is constituted by the paradigms.24

The hold of the categories supplied by paradigms on the
scientists is weakened by the crisis situations, and in these
revolutionary stages of scientific activity the scientists do
behave to some extent like innocent children free of all
preconceptions about the world, according to the Baconian ideal.
However, according to Kuhn, these are precisely the situations
when one finds nothing mechanical at all in the scientific
activity, and when all the 'idols' that Bacon set out to exorcise
get free play in the scientist's mind.

Individual scientists embrace a new paradigm for all sorts
of reasons and usually for several at once. Some of these
reasons - for example, the sun worship that helped make
Kepler a Copernican - lie outside the apparent sphere of
science entirely. Others must depend upon the idiosyncrasies
of autobiography and personality. Even the nationality on the
prior reputation of the innovator and his teachers can
sometimes play a significant role....25

Perhaps the scientific community as a whole is less swayed by
these idols of the mind. But even for the community, acceptance
of a new paradigm is hardly a mechanical process based on
'certain rule and method', but involves intangible considerations
like aesthetic appeal, neatness, simplicity, etc.26

Having arrived at this completely non-Baconian understanding
of the process of scientific development, and having seen the
influence of non-mechanical cultural and personal factors in the
crucial stages of the history of science, one expects that Kuhn
would abandon the idea of modern science being somehow a uniquely
valid representation of reality. One would expect him to take a
relativistic position, allowing for the possibility of different
cultures arriving at different yet equally valid apprehensions of
reality. Particularly so, because, given his understanding of
scientific progress, Kuhn refused to agree thatscience, through
its revolutionary paradigm changes, could be seen to be moving
towards absolute truth in the Baconian sense of becoming a
perfect representation of reality.

However, as Kuhn is quick to point out, this does not mean
that scientific understanding of reality is relative. He tells us
that even though modern science cannot be shown to be a
transcript of the divine mind, yet it remains the uniquely valid
apprehension of reality available to humanity, simply because no
other culture has ever possessed any science. In the last chapter
of his book Kuhn claims:

Every civilization of which we have records has possessed
a technology, an art, a religion, a political system, laws,
and so on. In many cases those facets of civilizations have
been as developed as our own. But only the civilizations that
descended from Hellenic Greece have possessed more than the
most rudimentary science. The bulk of scientific knowledge is
a product of Europe in the last four centuries. No other
place and time has supported the very special communities
from which scientific productivity comes.27

Later on, in the postscript to his book, appended to the 1970
edition, he makes his non-relativistic position more explicit:

Applied to culture and its development that position is
relativistic. But applied to science it may not be, and it is
in any case far from mere relativism.... Taken as a group or
in groups, practitioners of the developed sciences are...
fundamentally puzzle-solvers. Though the values that they
deploy at times of theory-choice derive from other aspects of
their work as well, the demonstrated ability to set up and
solve puzzles presented by nature is... the dominant
criterion for most members of a scientific group....28

And in his 1970 paper in honour of Sir Karl Popper,29
the ability to support a puzzle-solving tradition, which so far
seemed one of the many considerations that go into paradigm
choice, becomes the mechanical criterion that can be used to
separate science from non-science. And Kuhn in 1970 triumphantly
claimed that, like Sir Karl Popper, he, too, could prove
astrology, psychoanalysis and Marxist historiography to be
nonscientific. Kuhn even concluded with Karl Popper that if 'we
have deliberately made it our task to live in this unknown world
of ours... then there is no more rational procedure than the
method of... conjecture and refutation.' Or for that matter, any
other method that Bacon, Popper or Kuhn determine that modern
science has or ought to follow.

The net result of Kuhn's liberal understanding of the
phenomenon of modern science is that what Bacon wanted to prove
as the unique truth about the world on epistemological
considerations, now becomes so on the grounds of the historical
uniqueness of the western scientific community. But it remains
the unique truth about the world and the uniquely appropriate way
of living in the world. The discipline of the philosophy of
science may have gained new insights and fresh vitality because
of the Kuhnian exercise, but the core Baconian conception of a
uniquely true science has lost no ground thereby.

Kuhn established the non-relative, unique validity of western
science by asserting that the descendants of the Hellenic
civilization alone were able to arrive at the correct
societal-epistemological formula that would ensure the
development of anything more than the most rudimentary science.
However, Kuhn, notwithstanding his scholarship in the history of
western science, does not happen to be an authority on the
non-Hellenic civilizations and their sciences. Fortunately, in
Joseph Needham we have a contemporary scholar who has extensively
studied the sciences of a non-western civilization along with its
detailed cultural, social and philosophical background. His
conclusions about the Chinese sciences are of interest in the
context of Kuhn's summary dismissal of the sciences of
non-Hellenic civilizations; and so is the way Needham deals with
the Baconian injunction that modern science be looked upon as the
uniquely true transcription of reality.

Joseph Needham, after his investigation into the Chinese
science and civilization, finds no evidence in favour of the
claim that descendants of Hellenic Greece alone proved capable of
producing anything approaching a science. On the contrary,
Needham comes to the conclusion that 'between the first century
B.C. and fifteenth century A.D. Chinese civilization was much more
efficient than the occidental in applying human natural
knowledge to practical human needs', and that, 'in many ways this
[the Chinese intellectual and philosophical tradition] was much
more congruent with modern science than was the world outlook of
Christendom.'30

Needham in his major work, Science and Civilization in
China, offers a vision of the amazing range and
sophistication of the sciences and technologies that developed in
China before their independent development was stifled by the
impact of Europe.31 In his 'Legacy of China' article,
Needham also gives a list of the discoveries, inventions and
concepts which travelled from China to the west and had a seminal
influence in precipitating the scientific revolution there.32
Incidentally, in this list of important inventions transmitted
from China to Europe are included the three which, according to
Bacon, 'changed the whole face and state of things throughout the
world' (I. 129), namely, printing, gunpowder and the magnetic
compass. Needham also points out that while these three and many
other techniques were invented in China and were developed and
extensively utilized in the Chinese society over centuries
without disrupting that society in any way, they, strangely,
shook occidental society to its roots.

One of the striking examples Needham gives in this connection
is that of the invention and transmission of the mechanical
clock. According to Needham, a working hydro-mechanical clock was
built in China about A.D. 725. From then onwards, one can trace
in Chinese society a tradition of clock building which continued
up to the seventeenth century. It seems that the invention
reached Europe six hundred years later, in the fourteenth
century, and it immediately caused a ferment there. The idea of
the mechanical clock so gripped the European imagination that by
the middle of the fourteenth century 'no European community felt
able to hold up its head unless in its midst the planets wheeled
in cycles and epicycles, while angels trumpeted, cocks crew, and
apostles, kings and prophets marched and countermarched at the
booming of the hour.'33 And while the European
communities rested content with building fancy clocks, the
European intellectuals went further and started seeing the whole
world as an analogue of the clockwork mechanism. For bishops and
mathematicians, the universe became a vast mechanical clock
created by God so that 'all the wheels moved as harmoniously as
possible'.34

In other words, Chinese society could absorb and take in its
stride its major technological achievements. These achieve meets
on reaching Europe often caused indigestion which, according to
Needham, amounted to major metamorphoses. The reasons for this
strangely unstable behaviour in Europe compared to the quiet
response of China have to be looked for in the complex of
cultural-philosophical values and sociopolitical organizations
current in the west and in China. However, whatever the reasons
for this phenomenon, the prevalence of some unique scientific
outlook in the west and its absence in China is not one of them.
We have mentioned that Needham found the intellectual and
philosophical tradition of China to be much more in conformity
with modern science than that of the west. He was also
categorical in his assertion that the technological achievements
of China were not the result of merely empirical efforts, but
were made possible through the application of sophisticated
scientific concepts and theories. He insists that just 'because
practical inventions were the only things that the Indian, the
Arabic, or Western cultures were generally capable of taking over
from the Chinese cultural-area, this does not mean that the
Chinese themselves had been mere "sooty empiricks". On
the contrary, there was a large body of naturalistic theory in
ancient and medieval China, there was systematic recorded
experimentation, and there was a great deal of measurement often
quite surprising in its accuracy.'35

According to Needham, the Chinese, before the European impact,
had not only evolved more sophisticated sciences and technologies
than those of the west, but also retained an entirely different
conception of the law of nature.36 In the west, nature
has always been thought of as being governed by laws laid down by
an external God. We have seen that the primary urge in Bacon was
to find a method of deciphering these divine laws, and then
playing God with nature and man. Now Needham tells us that for
Kepler, Descartes, Boyle and Newton, the laws of nature which
they believed 'they were revealing to the human mind, were edicts
which had been issued by a supra-personal supra-rational
being'.37 For the Chinese, however, there never was
any celestial lawgiver issuing commands to nature. Nature was
self-governed, unfolding itself according to its own internal
harmonies. The object of science for the Chinese therefore was
not to decipher the law in order to put nature to human uses, but
to find out the way of nature, the Tao of Heaven, in order to be
able to go along with it, to live according to the Tao.

Such vastly different conceptions of the law of nature in
China and the west arose, according to Needham, because of their
different conceptions about the role of the political authority
in society. The Chinese society, except during the draconian
authoritarianism of the Chi'n (Chhin) dynasty (221 B.C- 007
B.C.), never accepted the legalist idea that the king could
dictate law for the people. The political authority could only
codify the complex of customs, usages or ceremonies of the people
and administer the law accordingly. And just as the Chinese could
not tolerate the idea of a terrestrial king laying down the law
for people, they could not think of a celestial authority doing
the same for nature. Needham also believes that with these ideas
about the political authority, the Chinese also evolved an
essentially 'democratic' polity, administered by a non-hereditary
bureaucracy to which admission was strictly according to merit.

In Europe, on the other hand, the idea of the positive law
dictated by the king came to be accepted rather early.
Correspondingly, the idea of a supreme being dictating laws for
natural objects also became a part of orthodoxy. Needham makes
this point explicit.

Without doubt one of the oldest notions of Western
civilization was that just as earthly imperial lawgivers
enacted codes of positive law, to be obeyed by men, so also
the celestial and supreme rational creator deity had laid
down a series of laws which must be obeyed by minerals,
crystals, plants and stars in their courses.39

This idea that natural objects must obey natural laws just as
human beings obey human laws was so strong in Europe that in 1474
a cock was prosecuted and sentenced to be burnt alive for the
'unnatural crime' of laying an egg, and there was a similar
prosecution in Switzerland as late as 1730.40

We have given a rough sketch of Needham's ideas about Chinese
science and civilization. With such high appreciation of the
sciences and technologies developed by the Chinese, and with such
a clear conception of the differing social, political and
epistemological moorings of Chinese science and society, one
would have expected that Needham would give up the Baconian idea
of the unique validity of western science, and explore the
possibility of different societies developing different yet
equally valid sciences. However, we find him protecting the
Baconian ideas through a curious two-step procedure.

First, he admits that not only were the Chinese sciences and
technologies better developed, but China also had a better
conception about the laws of nature, and better socio-political
organizations. However, through their own logic of evolution,
European science and society have already arrived at conceptions
similar to those of the Chinese. Thus, Needham points out, a
democratic bureaucracy is now considered the appropriate
instrument of governance all over Europe, and laws of nature in
modern science are now thought of as statistical regularities
rather than divine edicts. Next, Needham claims that though
Chinese conceptions about science and society were essentially
correct, yet they held those conceptions rather early, much
before their appropriate time. The Chinese, according to Needham,
had established a bureaucracy much before the advent of
telephones and computers, which alone could bring out the
potentials of bureaucracy as 'a magnificent instrument of human
social organization'.41 And the Chinese rejected the
idea of a celestial lawgiver before the full potential of the
idea in the form of Newtonian sciences could be explored, and
also before any development similar to quantum physics
necessitated acceptance of the idea of the law of nature as a
mere statistical regularity. Towards the end of the chapter on
the laws of nature, Needham asks:

The problem is whether recognition of such statistical
regularities and their mathematical expression could have
been reached by any other road than that which science
actually travelled in the West. Was the state of mind in
which an egg-laying cock could be prosecuted at law necessary
in a culture which should later have the property of
producing a Kepler?42

And his answer seems to be that there could not be any other
road: 'Who shall say that the Newtonian phase was not an
essential one?'

The implication is that not only are the final truths arrived
at by western science uniquely valid, but the exact historical
sequence through which they were arrived at in the west was
essential and necessary. The Chinese had, rather early, held
positions about science and society which Needham believes were
congruent with those of modern western science and society. But
that happened to be 'too early' for such positions to be useful
in apprehending the truth. The Chinese, through those positions,
perhaps achieved what Bacon would have called 'anticipations of
nature'; the Chinese themselves, being hasty, failed to arrive at
the 'true' sciences.

It seems strange to insist that authoritarian concepts of
nature and society are essential for the evolution of true
democracy and the true laws of nature. It seems even stranger
that Needham, a humanist and a scholar who has known another
civilization in its full glory, should take such a stand. That he
does take such a stand shows the persisting influence of the
Baconian injunction that Baconian sciences be looked upon as the
true and hence unique transcriptions of reality. It also perhaps
indicates what diverse forms racism can take.

For our third example of a scholar who does not belong to the
positivist tradition and yet upholds the Baconian conception of
the unique validity of the western science, we take a modern
Cartesian, Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology.
Husserl's major interest is of course to establish the study of
subjectivity as the proper concern of philosophy, and construct a
methodology that will lead to apodictic certainty in this
context. However, in a number of his essays and lectures,
especially in the Crisis of European Sciences, the Vienna
Lecture, and the Origin of Geometry, Husserl offers
systematic reflections on the nature of the positive sciences and
on the question of their unique validity.43

Husserl, of course, does not agree with the Baconian
epistemology that looks upon science as 'objective' knowledge of
the world, acquired without any subjective intervention, without
subjectivity playing any role in it. For Husserl this
objectivism, which takes the 'form of various types of
naturalism', is na´ve because 'what is acquired through
scientific activity is not something real but something ideal.'
But the na´vetÚ of objectivism has marked the philosophy of the
whole modern period since the Renaissance and all the sciences,
the beginnings of which were, according to Husserl, already there
in Greek antiquity, have been caught in this na´vetÚ. He finds
only German idealism, proceeding from Kant, as being passionately
concerned with overcoming this fault.44

Though for Husserl this na´vetÚ of objectivism is an error,
like Needham in another context, he finds this error a necessary
stage in the development of European philosophy which for him
includes all sciences as its branches. Through this na´vetÚ
'the world becomes the objective world as opposed to
representations of the world, those which vary according to
nation or individual subject, thus truth becomes objective
truth.' Objectivism thus appears as the first unfolding of the
theoretical attitude which, according to Husserl, is the essence
of the European scientific spirit.45

However, by adopting the objectivist-positivist attitude,
science drops from its domain all questions regarding 'reason'
and 'meaning' of the world, and thereby loses sight of its own
'meaning'. This leads to human faith in 'reason' and 'science'
becoming diluted. There arises a feeling of 'distress' in all the
sciences regarding their meaning. This is the Crisis of
European Sciences. Yet it must be made clear that 'this is a
crisis which... shakes to the foundations the whole meaning of
their truth.'46

It is the promise of phenomenology that, through an
investigation into subjectivity it will overcome the crisis, it
will reveal with apodictic certainty the 'meaning of the truth'
of the 'science', and restore man's faith in 'reason' and
'science', because lack of this faith means nothing less than the
loss of faith 'in himself, in his own true being'. This meaning
of the truth of science will presumably be discovered after a
phenomenological exercise, and in that sense Husserl's Crisis becomes
another introduction to phenomenology. However, he already offers
an intimation of the meaning of the sciences. This meaning,
according to him, lies in the theoretical attitude which,
roughly speaking, looks upon the world as an infinity of
idealities, to be discovered one after the other in an infinite
horizon in which the truth-in-itself counts as an infinitely
distant point, while at any time the finite number of idealities
discovered are retained as persisting validities.47
This theoretical attitude, according to Husserl, made its
appearance amongst the Greeks, and remains unique to Europe.
Therefore it is not valid to talk of a Chinese or an Indian
philosophy or science as one talks of the European philosophy or
science. In the second part of the Crisis and in the Origin
of Geometry, Husserl also sketches the unfolding of this theoretical
attitude through the intellectual history of Europe in a way
that is reminiscent of the Marxian unfolding of history through
its various stages. Husserl's work carries with it the same sort
of determinism and finality as Marx's.

Having already arrived at a deterministic account of the
intellectual development of man, one wonders what more is to be
achieved through the phenomenological exercise. It seems that
Husserl wants to achieve an apodictically certain answer to a
question which he repeatedly asks, to which he already seems to
have the answer, if one goes by his 'historical reflections'
which we have talked about above. The question he asks is:

There is something unique here in Europe that is
recognized in us by all other human groups, too, something
that, quite apart from all considerations of utility, becomes
a motive for them to Europeanize themselves even in their
unbroken will to spiritual self-preservation, whereas we, if
we understand ourselves properly, would never Indianize
ourselves, for example.48

The question then is: whether the spectacle of the
Europeanization of all other civilizations bears witness to
the rule of an absolute meaning, one which is proper to the
sense, rather than to a historical non-sense, of the world.49

And

Whether the telos which was inborn in European
humanity at the birth of Greek philosophy... is merely a
factual, historical delusion, the accidental acquisition of
merely one among many other civilizations and histories, or
whether Greek humanity was not rather the first breakthrough
to what is essential to humanity as such... 50

Thus Husserl through his phenomenology will not only provide
apodictic certainty about the 'meaning of the truth' of Baconian
sciences, but will also 'prove' with the same certainty the
unique 'humanity' of the Greek humanity and its descendants, the
European people.

It is curious that someone concerned with the exploration of
subjectivity, of consciousness, should formulate such a racist
version of the Truth.

IV

In this final section we offer a few brief comments on the
consequences of holding such a Baconian view of knowledge. First,
we feel that the Baconian project of orienting all knowledge
towards a search for power, towards control over both man and
nature, and at the same time insisting that this knowledge has
some unique validity, is inherently violent. It is no wonder,
therefore, that Francis Bacon, who rejoiced over the acquisition
of power by Europe over the rest of humanity through the use of
the 'true' arts, such as that of gunpowder and the compass,51
also often recommended to King James I various ways of expanding
his empire. Such expansion would be useful, he urged, both for
acquiring material benefits and for the honour of civilizing
barbarians through spreading truth and casting out superstition.52
The exercise in a way continues till today; the Baconian sciences
and corresponding social norms continue to make deep incursions
into all other knowledge systems and societies.

It is not accidental that Hobbes, who was at one time
secretary to Bacon, while expanding Baconian ideas into the
political domain, comes to the conclusion in his Leviathan that
no individual has the right to challenge the absolute authority
and the absolute truthfulness of the existing powers. Hobbes
therefore also claims that in a Baconian society the virtuous
man, the man who claims to know what is right and what is wrong,
is the most dangerous person.

This brings us to our second point. Baconian truth, which is
synonymous in Bacon's system with power, necessarily requires an
'other' in the form of nature, society of man, on whom the power
is to be exercised, through whom the 'truth' is to be made
manifest. As a consequence, this truth remains absolutely
non-universalizable, notwithstanding its claim to absolute
validity. What is true for the one who holds power is necessarily
false for the other who must be manipulated according to it. What
is more, sooner or later the other, be it nature or man, tries to
strike back and puncture the myth of universal validity. The
intractable ecological problems that started surfacing in the
1960s are perhaps nature's way of striking back at man who takes
her as an object to be manipulated according to his supposedly
universally valid truth. Perhaps this is the message Gandhi
conveys in Hind Swaraj when he says of European
civilization: 'This civilization is such that one only has to be
patient, and it will be self-destroyed.'53
Gandhi's perception of the self-destructiveness of the European
civilization, in turn, echoes the realization expressed in the Bhagavadgita
that civilizations based on concepts such as those of Bacon
destroy themselves again and again.54

Finally, the Baconian idea of truth is in no way universal to
mankind. In India the ultimate 'truth' has always been held to be
different from both avidya, the knowledge of the mortal
world, and vidya, the knowledge of the immortal in man and
the universe. The Isawasya Upanisad55advises us:

Those who know both vidya and avidya along
with the Ultimate Truth, they [alone] live through the mortal
world through avidya and enjoy the immortal through vidya....
Those who worship avidya [alone] enter into blind
darkness. Into darkness still greater than that, as it were,
do they enter who delight in vidya [alone].56

What depths of blind darkness the Baconian conception of
knowledge perpetuates!